Quotes from The Oracle Glass

Judith Merkle Riley ·  528 pages

Rating: (3.5K votes)


“I could feel something cold stalking my heart. It was fear. They all begin this way, I thought, with pledges of love.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


“When faced with the illogical, one must expand the sphere of logic to include rules of logic for that which is not logic. This is the only possibility in a world that works according to the rules of rationality.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


“Oaths, in my opinion, infernal or not, ought to be short.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


“After all, he meant well. Foreigners never seem to understand how little attraction an island of damp fogs, cut off from civilization, and a provincial little court has for us Parisians, who inhabit the most cultivated, powerful monarchy in the world.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


“Daughter, your presence is a stay and consolation to me. Begin again in the Tenth Book; tell me, how does Aristotle define true happiness?” “Father, he tells us that true happiness is found in contemplation, whereas the common idea of happiness as pleasant amusements is fostered by the courts of tyrants.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass



“Why the Romans, Father?” I asked him one afternoon. “Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead,” he answered.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


“Are you aware of the penalties reserved for freethinkers? I could send you to the block. Good.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


“I mistrust mountebanks—especially of the female variety.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass


About the author

Judith Merkle Riley
Born place: in Brunswick, Maine, The United States
Born date January 14, 1942
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“If you don't love him, if you don't even care about him, then seeing him now shouldn't be all that painful. Should it?”
― Tess Gerritsen, quote from The Sinner


“What chatty Madam Shpolyanski mentioned had conjured up Mira's image with unusual force. This was disturbing. Only in the detachment of an incurable complaint, in the sanity of near death, could one cope with this for a moment. In order to exist rationally, Pnin had taught himself...never to remember Mira Belochkin - not because...the evocation of a youthful love affair, banal and brief, threatened his peace of mind...but because, if one were quite sincere with oneself, no conscience, and hence no consciousness, could be expected to subsist in a world where such things as Mira's death were possible. One had to forget - because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one's lips in the dusk of the past.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Pnin


“Then why don't you go and ---- yourself.”
― Anthony Horowitz, quote from Scorpia Rising


“Sometimes the answers are more questions. Sometimes up is down.”
― Gwen Hayes, quote from Falling Under


“My children know nothing of Christmas. They have so little, and want so little, it makes me feel guilty for the mindless materialism of our culture.”
― John Grisham, quote from Skipping Christmas


Interesting books

Off Season
(7.9K)
Off Season
by Jack Ketchum
Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations
(10K)
Do Hard Things: A Te...
by Alex Harris
Timbuktu
(10.2K)
Timbuktu
by Paul Auster
The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions
(8.7K)
Magic to the Bone
(11.8K)
Magic to the Bone
by Devon Monk
The Third Eye
(2.4K)

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.